death unhinged its jaw
by Lennelle
Summary: death unhinged its jaw and swallowed them whole, only to spit them back out again after.


I can finally post my summergen piece! This was written for julia-sets based on her prompts, which I won't tell you because of spoilers. I don't want to give to much away so I'll let you read on.

Warnings: suicide mention, death, lots of blood and gore.

* * *

Sam pulls in a shuddering breath. His knees feel weak, legs threatening to buckle under him. He drops down onto one of the swings and gently rocks back and forth, his cheek pressed against the metal chain. It's pitch black, the air is cool, and the play park sways softly in the breeze, rusted hinges groaning.

Sam drops his machete to the gravel ground and wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His fingers come away bloody, there's more of it spattered down his shirt. Shame. He liked this shirt.

"You hurt?" Dean asks, taking a seat on a rocking horse opposite. He's spattered with as much red as Sam is, it stains his hair and spikes it in every direction. Dean makes a face and flicks what looks like a glob of flesh from his jacket sleeve.

"Not my blood," Sam answers. "Could do with sleeping for a week, though."

Dean snorts. "Yeah, I could do with a drink first," he mumbles, rocking back and forth, fashioning a gun with his fingers and shooting enemies in the wild west he's concocted in his head. Dean always wanted to be a cowboy, his age never withered that fantasy away.

Sam gave up on dreaming a long time ago.

"We should clean this mess up," Dean says, gesturing to the headless corpses heaped under the monkey bars. "I want a hot shower and an extra-large meat lovers pizza."

Sam checks the time on his phone. The screen is blurred by spots of blood. He wipes it clean with his already-ruined shirt. "It's almost 4am," he says. "I think I saw a 24-hour diner on the way over here."

They're experts when it comes to burying bodies. There's a rhythm to it, Sam feels the beat of his heart pounding in his head and digs, digs, digs. It's late, no one will be in the park at this time, no one will see them under the cover of the trees, at the edge of the woods. Dig, dig, dig. Beat, beat, beat.

Dean chats away, but Sam doesn't hear it.

Dig, dig, dig.

* * *

Dean took the first shower, leaving Sam to stand under a cold spray, water turning red to pink to clear. It took a long time to get vamp blood out of his hair, the ends are still a little reddish once he's done.

He stares at a strand dangling over his forehead, eyes crossing over and blurring. He's tired, the lights in the diner are overwhelming, a headache begins to bloom.

Dean is halfway through his burger. The smell of meat turns Sam's stomach as he pokes at his plate of fries.

"How can you eat that?" Sam asks. "I've still got _bits_ in my hair."

Mouth full, Dean shrugs and takes another bit. "Eat your dinner," he says. Or, Sam assumes he says so, it's hard to tell when his mouth is stuffed with meat, bread and onions. Ketchup catches the corner of his mouth and dribbles to his chin. Sam gets to his feet.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he mutters, already out of the booth.

The restroom is small. Small by Sam's standards, at least. He ducks inside, the door swings shut behind him with a jarring crack. In the mirror, he's pale, eyes dull and bruised underneath. He could use some sleep. He runs the tap, dangles his fingers under the cold rush of water. The chill burns, it feels nice.

He splashes his face a couple of times and dries off with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Get it together," he says to the Sam in the mirror and scrubs his hair from his face. He glances for a moment at the remaining half of his little finger on his right hand, the rest of it rotted in a ghoul's stomach long ago.

He takes another few breaths before heading back. Back in the diner, the first thing he notices is how quiet it is. No clinking forks against plates, no voices from the kitchen, nor the clack of the waitress's heels against the floor.

His gaze sweeps around the area, instincts kicking in. He spots Dean on the other side of the room, inching away from the booth, his hand reaching for his gun at the back of his belt. He spots Sam and freezes.

By the counter, the waitress is backed against the wall, hands up and trembling. A man points a gun at her face as he fishes bills out of the cash register. The restroom door falls shut heavily behind Sam and all eyes turn on him, along with the barrel of a gun.

He doesn't have time to raise his hands or back away before the shot goes off. He feels it through his bones, his muscle, his skin, especially in the upper left side of his abdomen and through to his back where the bullet makes its journey.

Sam sees the kid's face for a split second - because he is just a ikid/i, wide-eyed and pale-faced. His hands tremble, his mouth drops open but no words come out. He didn't mean to do this, Sam understands. This was never meant to go too far.

A second shot goes off and Sam's shooter hits the ground with a painful thud. Sam wavers on his feet, hand reaching out blindly for anything to hold onto. The waitress screams, heels clacking as she stumbles about, panicked.

Sam stares at the kid, just a faceless lump beneath an oversized hood. He isn't breathing, Sam realises. Dean's a great shot. Sam's legs give out and he falls onto his knees hard enough to bruise. Dean's there, hand pressed against Sam's wound, the pain flares and he gasps. The black-and-white linoleum is slowly turning red.

"You shot him," Sam says through strained breaths.

"He shot you first," Dean grumbles, pulling Sam unsteadily to his feet. He carries most of Sam's weight as they stumble towards the door. Blearily, Sam can see the Impala waiting patiently in the parking lot, dusty and tinged orange under the street lamp.

"I'll call 911!" the waitress cries after them, finally clear of the shock. Sam can see her reflection in the window, drained of colour and chest heaving, a cell phone jammed to her ear like it's glued there.

"We're alright!" Dean calls back, nudging the door open with his shoulder and guiding Sam out. "Not as bad as it looks!"

Sam's hands are clasped over the bullet wound, getting wetter and wetter by the second. He loses his balance on the curb and nearly goes face first into the asphalt, but Dean holds him steady. Once he's situated in the passenger seat, he spares one last glance into the diner. The waitress watches them go with a hand clapped over her mouth, a kid's corpse at her feet.

"He didn't need to die," Sam says some time later, with several miles scraped under their tires and another pint leaked from Sam's body. He can taste blood on his tongue, warm wetness at the corner of his mouth.

"He shot you."

"So?"

Dean's jaw clenches. "He shot you, he would have shot someone else."

Sam struggles to hold his head up, lets it droop against the window. There are droplets on the glass from the rain that catch the bright lights of motel signs and headlights like jewels.

"I'm tired," Sam tells Dean.

Dean doesn't say anything, just glances at Sam from the corner of his eye and steps on the gas. The speed makes Sam's stomach turn, which makes his muscles clench, which aggravates his wound. He stifles a groan.

"We'll find somewhere nice," Dean says. "Somewhere warm and cosy for you to ride this out."

Sam snorts. _Ride it out_ is an interesting way of putting it. His stomach spasms and blood bubbles up his gullet, salty and hot. He can't breathe, but his body no longer has the energy to panic. He lets his eyes close, too tired to hold them open much longer.

It's slow, the creeping cold throughout his body, his breaths becoming few and further between, garbled around the blood that won't stop.

Dean puts on Sam's favourite cassette tape. Bob Seger's Beautiful Loser. He feels the car rumble beneath him, listens to Travelin' Man, and bleeds out on the leather upholstery.

A few minutes later, at 5.54am, Sam Winchester dies in the passenger seat of their 67 Chevy Impala.

* * *

The first time it happened, they were so deep in a forest that the sky was blotted out by the canopy. A wendigo hunt was simple as a run to the store for more beer, these days. With Gods and alternate universes and the fourth apocalypse of the decade, cannibalistic monsters just weren't the threat they used to be.

But a job was a job and people were dying. A 1967 Chevy Impala rolled into some no-name town in Colorado.

Sam and Dean had been trekking for several hours with little sign of the wendigo. All they found were the ruins of a camping site and no survivors to tell the story.

"Maybe we should come back tomorrow morning," Sam suggested. "It's getting dark."

Dean tore a chunk out of his granola bar and made a face. "Jeez, Sam. You couldn't get us snickers or something?" he complained. "I'm gonna starve to death before the wendigo tries to take a piece out of me."

Sam narrowed his eyes at him.

"Alright," Dean relented. "We'll come back tomorrow."

They strapped on their backpacks and began to retrace their steps. They went on for half an hour before a scream echoed through the trees, shrill and terrified. Another sounded from the opposite direction, a child this time.

"Looks like we can get this done in time for dinner," Dean chirped, pulling his flare gun from his belt. "Come to papa!"

Sam rolled his eyes but couldn't help the small smile that lifted the corner of his mouth. It was good to see Dean like this. It was good to see him happy. He'd been different after Michael, and every terrible thing that had come with him saying yes.

It wasn't your fault, Sam had told him numerous times. But Sam knew better than anyone that those words didn't mean a thing when guilt was eating you up inside.

A shape whipped through the trees in a blur. For a second, Sam caught the shape of something tall and skeletal. Sam and Dean moved instinctively, backs pressed together, flare guns raised. It struck out at Sam first and sent him flying into a tree trunk, back colliding painfully. He tumbled to the ground, breathless, and tried to get back on his feet, but the slightest movement set his back aflame with agony.

Sam rolled onto his side, pulled out his flare from where it was wedged beneath him and tried to settle his vision. The small clearing was split in two. Twice the trees, two Deans, two wendigos crawling out of the shadows towards him. Dean wasn't looking, his wide-eyes were locked on Sam.

"You okay, Sammy?" he asked.

"Dean, look out!"

He turned a second too late. The wendigo's long, spindly hand reached out and clasped Dean's head in its palm, sharp claws dug into his neck and squeezed. Dean only had a second or two to cry out, legs kicking, before Sam heard a sickening crunch and a wet rip. From the neck down, Dean hit the floor with a heavy thud, his head still clasped in the wendigo's claws.

Sam didn't think, he pointed his flare gun and fired. Two wendigos merged back into one as it went up in flame. It shrieked and flailed, Dean's head went rolling across the leaf-littered forest floor and came to a stop an arm's reach from Sam.

He couldn't move. He didn't breathe for the longest time, not until his lungs ached and his mouth gaped open to suck in air. It tasted of burned flesh and blood. Sam crawled forwards, the pain in his back forcing his belly to the ground.

His shaking fingers brushed over Dean's hair.

"No," he whispered. And again, louder. "No."

Carefully, he rolled Dean over to face him. His eyes were still open, glassy and surprised. The wendigo had stopped screeching, it now lay as a flaming pile of meat. It was too close to Dean's body, his jeans were singeing, a spark caught and flickered into the smallest flame.

Sam forced himself to his feet and dragged Dean's body away, over to his head, and stamped out the fire with his jacket. He sat for a long time, unable to look away. He arranged Dean back into one piece, carefully as possible, and rested his hands on his chest.

"Cas," was the first thing Sam said after a long stretch of silence. "I need you."

The pain in his chest expanded and consumed the entirety of him. Tears began to fall. Cas wasn't coming, never again. And now, neither was Dean. Never in a million years did Sam think he'd be the last one standing of the three of them.

Sam couldn't look at Dean anymore, he couldn't look at those dull, green eyes. He gently nudged them closed with his fingertips and draped his jacket over his head and shoulders. He had to bury Dean. He couldn't carry him back to the car, he would have to do it here.

He got to work just as the sun made the last of its journey below the horizon. Sam scoured the forest in the dark, flashlight sweeping his surroundings. It took a long time to find the wood and build the pyre. By the time he'd finished and was laying Dean on top, the sun was making a return, painting the sky a magnificent canvas of orange and pink.

He stood with Dean's lighter in his hand, thumb poised to strike up a flame. He couldn't do it. Not with Dean as he was, not in pieces and covered in blood. Sam retrieved the med kit from the bottom of his back pack and found the needle and thread. He pulled the jacket from Dean's face. He was paler than pale, grey almost, lips turned blue.

As Sam sewed, the sun slowly climbed higher in the sky.

Three days later, the pyre was still unlit. Sam had made his own campfire where he roasted a squirrel with a bullet in its belly, having run out of energy bars. He had a couple of sips left in his water bottle, he'd have to find more soon. He'd have to call their mom. He'd have to light the pyre and move on, but he couldn't.

Sam nibbled around the squirrel's leg, teeth gnashing on bone. He ate every bit of meat and threw it up right after. The scent of decay had begun. Birds had been circling around, swooping close until Sam chased them away.

He drank the last sips of water but his thirst wasn't quenched. There was a stream close by and Sam filled his bottle with muddy water. His lip curled but his stomach growled. He returned to the pyre with the intention of boiling the water clean over his campfire.

As he stepped into the clearing, he dropped the bottle, water splashing everywhere, soaking the ash where the wendigo's remains had been before Sam buried it. Dean was gone.

He stumbled to the pyre, hands scrambling uselessly over the wood like he might find his brother there, as if his eyes were just playing tricks on him. Something took him, a bear, perhaps.

"No," he muttered. "No, no, no."

"Sammy?"

Sam spun around, gun raised. Dean stood across the clearing, wearing the same blood-stained clothes he'd died in only days ago. He raised his hands and frowned at Sam.

"Dude, what happened? You look like shit," he said. There was a raised, red scar around his neck, the stitches still embedded in the skin. He winced, fingers brushing against it. "Oh, fuck," he said, eyes widening. "Did I die?"

Sam didn't answer. He dropped his weapon, crossed the clearing in two strides and yanked Dean into his arms. "Thank you," Sam whispered, to whoever was listening. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Hesitantly, Dean wrapped his arms around Sam. "That really happened?" Dean asked. "It wasn't some horrific nightmare? How the hell am I back?"

Sam didn't answer, because he had no answer to give. He held on tight and muttered _thank you_ , over and over, like a prayer.

* * *

This thing, whatever it is, has rules. Dean and Sam caught on after the first few deaths.

1) The more gruesome the death, the longer it takes to come back – get stabbed and bleed out? You'll be back in about a day. Lose your freakin' head? Give it three or four days. They haven't figured out the resurrection time for burning alive, and they don't intend on finding out soon.

2) Remove any foreign objects or that sucker is staying in there. You'll keep coming back and dying until you fish it out.

3) Re-attach limbs or they're gone for good. Just like Sam's pinky finger.

4) No aging. 30 years on and Dean doesn't look a day over 40.

5) No cure. Not yet.

Death unhinged its jaw and swallowed them whole, only to spit them back out again. Over and over and over.

* * *

Sam is beginning to turn stiff by the time Dean pulls up outside Rufus's old cabin in Whitefish. It takes some effort dragging him inside and onto the bed, boots scraping heavily across the wood floors.

They haven't been here in a long time, dust has settled on every surface. Dean covers Sam in a blanket and sets up the fireplace. He checks his watch. It's been a few hours since Sam's heart stopped beating. It'll be another few hours before he comes gasping back to life.

Dean finds a can of beans with a faded label in the cupboard and heats it up for dinner. He eats it in front of the fire and cleans his gun, and then Sam's. It's near dawn and Dean sips a beer on the porch, the pad of his thumb rubbing at the scar around his neck. This curse isn't as clean as resurrection by an angel's hand, but it does the job.

Cas once touched Dean's forehead and rearranged the broken bones and mended the bruised skin he'd suffered from Lucifer's blows at Stull. It seems so long ago, when Sam jumped into the cage. His third death, or was it his fourth?

After his beer is gone, Dean fills a bowl with warmed water and gets to work cleaning the blood from Sam's torso. His skin has gone white, blue veins standing out like rivers on a map, eyelids and lips bruised and bloodless.

Dean often dreams of moments like this: Sam's thirty-fourth of sixty-eighth death, only this time Sam doesn't wake up. He shakes away the thought and rinses out the cloth, the water in the bowl turns redder with each squeeze.

"You had to leave the bathroom at that exact moment, didn't you?" Dean says to his brother's corpse. "Just as the psycho with the gun turned up."

That's how their luck has always been. They're drawn to dying like moths to a flame. Death herself, however, is not as easy to get a hold of. The theory so far is that they're suffering the cosmic consequences she once promised them.

Dean slices away Sam's bloodied shirt with his pocket knife and tosses it on the fire. The bullet wound is on display now, a deep hole all the way though. He pats Sam's hand but the fingers are frozen and stiff like a wax doll. Rigor mortis sets in immediately after death, and about a day later the organs will begin to decompose. Not for Sam, however, his insides should be stitching themselves back together soon enough.

The two of them could be fascinating subjects for scientists.

Sam comes back a 5.03am, a little under 24 hours since his heart stopped. Coming back is no piece of cake, and Dean is there when Sam sucks in his first breath and shoots upright, trembling and gasping. Dean drapes a blanket over his shoulder and Sam coughs up a congealed gob of blood onto the mattress.

"Ugh," he groans, followed by his first word of this new life, "Gross."

"Eh, you've had worse," Dean says with a shrug. "That snake bite about eighteen years ago? _That_ was nasty."

Sam shudders and pulls the blanket tighter around him. He doesn't say anything, simply stares ahead, as if the damp and dusty cabin has secrets to share.

"You okay?" Dean asks. He's not an idiot, Sam's been down lately, for the past decade, at least.

"I just died."

"You've done it before," Dean points out. "Even before this started, you'd died plenty times. Me too."

Sam shakes his head. "But don't you feel it? Every time I come back, it's like something's different. Like I'm not who I was before." He scrapes his greasy hair out of his face with his fingers. "I don't feel… alive."

"Well," Dean says, with a lack of anything better to say, "you are alive. We both are. That's all I need."

"Cas is gone," Sam says, voice flat. "Jack is gone. Bobby, Charlie, Jody, Rowena. Mom is the only one left and one day she'll be gone, too. I can't watch another person I care about die."

Dean takes a seat at the foot of the bed and fiddles with the ring on his finger. It was his dad's, he thinks. It's too long ago to remember with certainty. Dean knows exactly what Sam is feeling. Burying Cas for the final time was painful, and a stupid part of Dean was still expecting him to come back because he did every time before. A year passed, and another, a whole decade. Cas was gone for good.

And what for? To rescue Dean from Michael. To rescue Dean from his own stupid decision.

"Let's go see Mom, then," Dean proposes.

Silently, Sam nods.

* * *

They made a joke of it after the first few times.

Who had the most badass death? Dean, a shootout with the ghost of _the_ Billy the Kid.

Dumbest death? Dean again, slipped and fell face first onto a pipe.

Slowest death? Alcohol poisoning. Dean.

And the worst? Sam, when he put a bullet in his own brain.

* * *

Mary is ecstatic to see them on her front step a few days later. She pulls them both into her arms and squeezes tight. Her smile is radiant, the lines around her eyes crinkle. Immediately after, she gives them both a shove.

"Why is it that I get no phone calls from my own sons?" she demands. "You both know how to pick up a phone, don't you?"

"Sorry, Mom," Sam and Dean mutter in unison.

Mary's smile returns and she summons them inside. Her house is small, one story, two bedrooms, the kitchen is immaculate on account of it never being used. Sam sits in the living room and watches her fetch beers from the fridge. She moves slower than she did, her hair has turned grey. When she gives Sam a beer he sees how swollen the joints in her hands have become. She finally looks old enough to be their mother.

She takes a seat in the armchair and glances at the two of them with a furrowed brow.

"Have you two been okay?" she asks. "I know I can't really lose either of you, but I still worry."

"We're good, Mom," Dean says. "Just been hunting."

A phone rings, there is a cluster of them on the kitchen wall, each with its own label. Mary moves to get up but Sam can see the strain of her arms and hears the creak of her joints. Dean pats her hand and gets to his feet.

"I'll get it," he offers.

"It's the one with 'FBI' on it," Mary says, settling back into her seat. "Susie was supposed to be checking out a morgue in New Orleans today."

"Gotcha," Dean says, and he hurries to the kitchen to answer.

As he puts on his most authoritative voice in the next room, Mary turns to Sam and reaches out a hand. Sam takes it and rubs his thumb along her fingers. She's warm and soft and living.

"Sammy," she says. "I know you, and I know you're not okay."

Sam drops his gaze. "I'm fine."

"Don't lie to me. You're a terrible liar."

She stares at him, unblinking as she waits. Her eyes are still vibrant green, just like Dean's, but the skin around them has wrinkled over the years. She wanted to know why they don't visit her as often, and this is the reason. Sam doesn't want to watch her get older. He doesn't want to see her die. He's had enough of death.

"I'm sorry," he says. "We should come see you more often."

She squeezes his hand. "I know you're busy."

Sam snorts. "No such thing as busy when you've got nothing but time. I died last night."

She sucks in a breath but her face barely flickers. "Did it hurt?" is all she asks.

"Yes," Sam admits. "But the pain is the least of it. One day you'll be gone, Mom, and we won't be able to follow you. You know, sometimes, I think – "

"What?" Mary asks when he doesn't elaborate.

"Maybe this is a punishment. I thought I'd paid for my mistakes, but maybe I was wrong." He drops his voice. "I know Dean thinks he deserves this, for saying yes to Michael. He feels responsible, for Cas and Jack."

Mary stands, slowly, and takes a seat at Sam's side on the couch, never once letting go of his hand. "After everything you've done for this world, and other worlds, it amazes me that you both think you're not heroes."

She presses a kiss to his cheek and Sam's eyes flutter shut, content in that moment for the first time in a long, long time.

"We'll visit more," he promises.

"You better," Mary says. "You're good, Sam. I love you, you know that?"

It's quiet, Dean's voice no longer drifts in from the kitchen. He lingers in the doorway, hands in his pockets.

"That goes for you, too," Mary says to him. "You're my boys. The best men I ever knew."

Dean nods awkwardly and clears his throat. "Um, we had a hunt lined up in New York, but I thought maybe we could stay for dinner instead."

Mary gets to her feet with a steadying hand from Sam. "I'll get the takeout menus, then," she says, beaming. She pauses in the doorway and kisses Dean on the cheek before disappearing into the kitchen.

Dean fetches his beer from where he left it on the coffee table and takes a long sip. "We can stop," he says to Sam. "Hunting, I mean."

"What else is there to do?" Sam asks. He's been hunting for longer than he can remember, he's not sure if they can do anything different. Besides, since they have nothing but time, why not take out every last stain of evil they can find?

Dean sighs heavily. "I think we've done our share," he says. "And I'm tired, Sam. Sure, stabbing something in the face makes me feel good for a while, but I'm fucking tired of it. When did we last take a vacation?"

"Never?"

"Exactly. We've never had a break. Now we can. Let's sort out this immortality thing later and go dig our toes in the sand."

Sam remembers Dean making the same proposal decades ago, before he said yes. Cas was a part of that vision, but there's only the two of them now. And Mom.

"I always wanted to go to Hawaii," Sam admits. He'd thought about it, once. It would have been a great honeymoon destination a lifetime ago with Jess. She had wanted to see the national parks.

"Cool," Dean says. "Hula dancers and Luaus, I'm down."

Mary, on the phone in the kitchen, smiles at the two of them. Sam tries not to think of the day they'll inevitable have to bury her, or the day when they know no living person on earth, or when the earth itself finally dies and all that's left is two brothers.

No. In this moment, they drink beer and order takeout. They live.


End file.
